No Country for Women - Humanism, Secularism, Feminism

Taslima Nasreen

Taslima Nasreen, an award-winning writer, physician, secular humanist and human rights activist, is known for her powerful writings on women oppression and unflinching criticism of religion, despite forced exile and multiple fatwas calling for her death. In India, Bangladesh and abroad, Nasreen’s fiction, nonfiction, poetry and memoir have topped the best-seller’s list.

Taslima Nasreen was born in Bangladesh. She started writing when she was 13. Her writings won the hearts of people across the border and she landed with the prestigious literary award Ananda from India in 1992. Taslima won The Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought from the European Parliament in 1994. She received the Kurt Tucholsky Award from Swedish PEN, the Simone de Beauvoir Award and Human Rights Award from Government of France, Le Prix de l' Edit de Nantes from the city of Nantes, France, Academy prize from the Royal Academy of arts, science and literature from Belgium. She is a Humanist Laureate in The International Academy for Humanism,USA. She won Distinguished Humanist Award from International Humanist and Ethical Union, Free-thought Heroine award from Freedom From Religion foundation, USA., IBKA award, Germany,and Feminist Press Award, USA . She got the UNESCO Madanjeet Singh prize for Promotion of the Tolerance and Non-violence in 2005. She received the Medal of honor of Lyon. She got honorary citizenship from Paris, Nantes, Lyon, Metz, Thionville, Esch etc. Taslima was awarded the Condorcet-Aron Prize at the “Parliament of the French Community of Belgium” in Brussels and Ananda literary award again in 2000.

Bestowed with honorary doctorates from Gent University and UCL in Belgium, and American University of Paris and Paris Diderot University in France, she has addressed gatherings in major venues of the world like the European Parliament, National Assembly of France, Universities of Sorbonne, Oxford, Harvard, Yale, etc. She got fellowships as a research scholar at Harvard and New York Universities. She was a Woodrow Wilson Fellow in the USA in 2009.

Taslima has written 40 books in Bengali, which includes poetry, essays, novels and autobiography series. Her works have been translated in thirty different languages. Some of her books are banned in Bangladesh. Because of her thoughts and ideas she has been banned, blacklisted and banished from Bengal, both from Bangladesh and West Bengal part of India. She has been prevented by the authorities from returning to her country since 1994, and to West Bengal since 2007.

EVENTS

Not long ago….

Once upon a time but not long ago, women didn’t have the voting right. Most people were against women’s voting right and their right to education. In some parts of the word, women had the right to education, even they had the right to work, but they did not have the right to vote. American women are telling us their stories.

Throughout history, there were people who did not want women to vote. Women would work, they would pay taxes, they would technically be considered citizens… but voting was for men. In America, when the right to vote was extended to include all races, all social positions, and all incomes, women were still not included. It didn’t matter if a man was illiterate, had been to jail, or if he was the town drunk. He could vote, and a woman, no matter who she was, could not.

Women suffragists (suffragettes) began campaigning in democratic countries all over the world to change this, starting in the mid-19th century. Their campaigns were largely peaceful and dignified… at least by 21st century standards. But by 19th century standards, these women were abhorrent and indecent, making fools of themselves by demanding to be treated like men.

One of the most notable things about the arguments put forth by the anti-suffragette movement was how weak its position was. Anti-suffragette arguments relied heavily on emotional manipulation and downright hateful nastiness. Humor was a much-used weapon against suffragettes. They were easy to depict as embittered old maids, brutal scolds, and cigar-smoking transvestites.

You can see what kinds of hatred misogynists expressed in their cartoons against women’s voting rights.

Men could not tolerate that women left home to join suffrage movement in the beginning of 20th century. They were so scared of taking care of their children! They feared that if women could get their rights, men would lose their’s. They still have this fear.

Women got the right to vote. They got the right to access to politics and to education. They go outside to work. They spend money they earn for their family. But still men don’t share chores and child care at home.

The feminists today suffer from the same misogyny the feminists yesterday suffered from. They are humiliated, hated, insulted, abused the way their feminist sisters were humiliated, hated, insulted and abused.

People get shocked today when they learn women were not allowed to get the right to vote and the right to education in the 20th century. People would get shocked tomorrow when they would learn that women were not allowed to get equality in the 21st century.

Comments

There seems to be a recurring theme here amongst the men that they will be left with the burden of child rearing. All of a sudden, having children doesn’t seem so wonderful. This just shows how some men view children. What in the world makes them think that all women want to be stuck at home with whinny kids. Forced parenthood is a good way to keep people too busy to get involved with politics and contributing to society.

In the Netherlands women gained full voting rights only in 1919 (although it took 3 more years before it was embedded in the Constitution). Full voting rights for men were gained in 1917.

Before that only men could vote who were older than 23 years, employed and reasonably well to do based upon taxes (estimated as 11 % of the men older than 23 years ). Those men were afraid of anyone who could challenge their power.

Almost a hundred years ago. And full equality worldwide seems millennia away…

Even close to a century later there’s a female state rep (and I’m sure many others) who wants to disenfranchise us because we don’t vote the right way. Seeing what the Gross Old Party has been up to these past couple of years I don’t blame them for being scared of what may happen in 2014 and 2016. The Rethuglicans may end up being the Whig Party of the 21st cnetury.

@Good These studies suggest that after giving birth, a woman’s brain chemistry reacts accordingly. That doesn’t mean they “want” to have children, it merely means we’ve evolved to help those kids survive once we have them. Finally, neither mention the brain chemistry of male parents in response to their own children…a particularly sexist omission.

Work time — paid at a job and unpaid at home — is almost equal for American men and women, says a report out today that shows men clocking in at 45.6 hours a week and women at 45.2.

But it’s not 50-50 in terms of work on the job and at home. Men spend about 10 hours a week more than women in paid work, and women spend about six hours more in household work and an additional three hours more in child care, says the analysis, by the Pew Research Center.

Husbands who do a lot of cooking, cleaning, laundry and other traditionally female forms of housework may do their marriages some good — but, contrary to popular belief, they are not rewarded with more sex, a new study finds.

Instead, it’s the guys who do the most lawn work, car repair, driving and bill-paying – traditional men’s jobs – who have the most sex in marriage, the study suggests. The same is true for women who do the most traditional female housework, according to the study published in the February issue of American Sociological Review.

Academics have long pondered why the government started growing precisely when it did. The federal government, aside from periods of wartime, consumed about 2 percent to 3 percent of gross domestic product (GDP) up until World War I. It was the first war that the government spending didn’t go all the way back down to its pre-war levels, and then, in the 1920s, non-military federal spending began steadily climbing. President Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s New Deal — often viewed as the genesis of big government — really just continued an earlier trend. What changed before Roosevelt came to power that explains the growth of government? The answer is women’s suffrage

Rockefeller also told Russo that his family’s foundation had created and bankrolled the women’s liberation movement in order to destroy the family and that population reduction was a fundamental aim of the global elite.

“Good”: I would like to know who ever implied that men who do their fair share of housework should be rewarded with more sex? This is some serious male privilege mentality. Doing your fair share is not heroic–it’s just equality. You don’t get a blow job just because you washed the dishes. By the way, citations from TRIPOD and conspiracy theory sites aren’t going to win you any arguments. Their credibility is…uh, questionable.

And really, does this last guy actually take a thoughtful and interesting article, and boil it down to being about his prick? It’s so funny to me, how obsessed men are with their small friends–it’s almost cute how important they think those little fleshy bits are. Don’t worry, Trillion, we will muddle through somehow.

Your point would be valid if men who did their fair share of housework had equal amounts of sex as men who didn’t. But men who DON’T do their fair share of housework are being rewarded with sex and men who do their fair share of housework are being PUNISHED for it. Now let me see you attempt to rationalize that.

Also, it is interesting regarding your accusation of “male privilege”. It is far from privilege that men feel the need to have to perform some sort of duty or impress their wives in some way in order for her to consider having sex with them, yet almost universally, men are expected to provide sex to their wives at the drop of a hat when the wives want it with no strings attached. Men who don’t are accused of cheating or being gay.

Women control sex in heterosexual relationships, thus are the actual ones privileged in that area.

women in traditionalist marriages on average feel much less empowered to say no to having sex with their husbands, than other women do. their religion says its their duty to give their husband his “rights”, and the man is viewed as her leader.